In the field of offshore oil and gas production, various technologies have been developed to provide flow assurance, i.e., enabling flow of hydrocarbon containing produced fluids in flowlines, also referred to as pipelines.
Among such technologies, direct electrical heating (DEH) technology has been applied to flowlines to provide flow assurance by preventing wax buildup and hydrate formation within flowlines. DEH technology can be especially useful to enable long subsea tiebacks to host facilities, i.e., long lengths of flowline used to connect a subsea drill center to a production facility. The production facility can be a surface facility on a platform or vessel, a shallow water facility or even an onshore facility. Alternating current can be transmitted via DEH cables, and can be returned to the surface production facility through the flowline walls. As a result of the electrical resistance in the flowline walls, heat is generated.
Subsea boosting is another technology that has been applied to offshore oil and gas production to provide flow assurance in subsea flowline systems including long subsea tiebacks. Pumps located on the seabed reduce back pressure on a reservoir to ensure an acceptable flow rate. Subsea boosting has known advantages in deep water, long distance tiebacks and multiple drill centers tied into a host facility.
The use of such technologies requires power to be delivered to multiple pieces of subsea equipment. There exists a need for systems and methods that integrate subsea power distribution to multiple subsea power users, i.e., subsea boosting and direct electrical heating, resulting in greater system efficiency and reduction in costs while providing flow assurance in a subsea flowline system.